The index is a collaboration between the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government and the think-tank Institute for Government, which said the findings would enable civil servants to see where countries performed well and identify areas for improvement.

According to the index, the UK ranked top for policy making, openness and social security administration, performing particularly well on the quality of policy advice, including whether it is evidence based.

It said the main area needing further attention was crisis/risk management, where the UK’s performance was just above average.

On digital services, the UK scored relatively highly for the cross-border mobility of services but less well against other themes considered.

The top 10 were:

Canada

New Zealand

Australia

United Kingdom

Finland

Sweden

Estonia

Norway

South Korea

United States of America

Adjusting scores for countries by gross domestic product gave a sharply different order, with the top 10 becoming: